Symposium to honor Anne Fausto-Sterling

Experts on feminism and science will gather for an afternoon symposium and exhibit Friday, May 2, 2014, to honor Anne Fausto-Sterling, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, for her decades of scholarship on biology and gender in science and society.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A May 2 symposium and exhibit will honor Anne Fausto-Sterling, a prominent biologist and scholar of gender and science. The afternoon event is titled “Feminism, Feminist Theory, and Science: Where We’ve Been and Where We Are Going.”

Fausto-Sterling, the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Biology and Gender Studies, will become professor emerita June 30. She is widely known for her studies of the biological and social nature of gender development. She has written three books and many academic papers on the subject and related areas. She was also founding director of Brown’s Program in Science and Technology Studies and helped to establish the undergraduate concentration, Science and Society.

The symposium will feature panel of talks by four scholars whose work builds on Fausto-Sterling’s research. Then she will take the stage as part of a discussion of feminist science studies.

In addition to the talks, the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, which hosts Fausto-Sterling’s papers in its Feminist Theory Archives, will stage an onsite exhibit from the Fausto-Sterling collection.

The exhibit “highlights Anne Fausto-Sterling's long career as a researcher, author, teacher, and activist,” said Pembroke Center archivist Wendy Korwin. “It will include early drafts, notes, and artwork from her publications; posters from presentations given across the country and internationally; examples from her collection of feminist literature and ephemera; and documents that recognize over four decades of service to Brown University.”

What
The panel, chaired by Nummedal, will present four talks:
• Richardson: “Gender and the Human Genome”
• Jacobson: “Social Norms in a Science of the Mind”
• Jordan-Young: “Sex as Chimera: Tools for Unthinking Difference”
• Hoffman: “De-sexing the Mind: Perspectives from the Philosophy of Mind on the Legacy of Anne Fausto-Sterling”
Weinstein will then moderate as Fausto-Sterling and Hammonds discuss “The Past and Future of Feminist Science Studies.”

Note to Editors:

Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.